


Laser Grids and Squeaky Sneakers

by Zinfandel



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Dancing, M/M, Self-Worth Issues, Surveillance, Training, and i like that, because i'm lame, eggsy is bamf and he don't even know it, merlin's lackeys are codenamed after types of magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 15:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5252951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zinfandel/pseuds/Zinfandel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry takes it upon himself to teach Eggsy the ways of dodging elegantly through laser security grids in the proper gentlemanly fashion. It doesn't go so well for Eggsy. Until it does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laser Grids and Squeaky Sneakers

**Author's Note:**

> i'm just transferring this ficlet from tumblr over to here. I've not edited it much, so apologies for the beginning where it goes from headcanoning into full on fic.

They’re at it for hours and days and Eggsy, as flexible and solid and balanced as he is, just can’t seem to get this stuff down. Harry had pulled him aside one fateful morning to begin lessons in maneuvering through laser gridded security systems. He was eager and excited, anticipating quality time with his mentor and friend to joke and work and just go through the lessons in a relaxed and stress free manner. but...

No matter how many times Harry gets down in his spandex and shows him, Eggsy just can’t get the breathing rhythms right, the timing correct, the footsteps proper. Harry is getting exasperated, but his patience is limitless with Eggsy, but Eggsy can tell, he knows. The man is getting tired of him failing.

So Eggsy needs to fix this, needs to do better, to impress. He comes to the training room to practice on his own time, at night, early morning, a free afternoon whatever. He’s in his spandex, all alone, no one to impress, to have pressure on the back of his neck, to fail for. 

He gets his workout music on, plugs in his headphones, ties the phone cable tightly to his body to not dangle into the practice laser strings, stretches, finds a beat, and…shit. Thats what he was missing. His lost rhythm kicks it with the bass.

He’s so good at parkour, freerunning, why didn’t he think of this sooner? He’s good at street dancing too, you have to be. Freerunning and street dance go hand in hand of course he dabbled in the art, it was the next step up after quitting gymnastics, it kept him moving in a manner that was socially acceptable in his neighborhood, with his friends, and even dean who even if he thought it was bullshit wasn’t harassing him so hard because at least then he was wearing hoodies and baggy pants instead of tumbling spandex. 

It didn’t even occur to eggsy to use what he learned on cardboard spinning mats in this manner. Yeah, some breakdance techniques were awesome in combat, it could really throw an opponent off, and was well liked when mixed with his marine and kingsmen combat techniques, but here? Yeah here it was perfect. 

Eggsy rolled his neck and cracked his knuckles and got down to business. The techniques and maneuvers Harry showed him for the wires were incorporated into dance in front of the mirror first, So eggsy could watch himself twist and turn and contort in the ways he needed. 

He made a quick jog down to the kitchen dumpsters of the estate to grab a bunch of old broken down boxes to haul back up to the training room to lay out on the foam rubber matting to help him slide and skid, and Eggsy was getting back into the rhythms of his old haunts, when it was too rainy out to leap from building rails his mates and he would retire to old unused warehouses and teach each other new moves, spin out on the greasy concrete and try and scavenge linoleum or cardboard to stash away for the next rainy weekend. 

Eggsy smiled quietly to himself at the brief memories of happiness and belonging hew found in his childhood in these ways, and they fueled him to keep going.

After a few weeks, where Harry was finding much improvement in Eggsy’s training in the normal fashion, but where Eggsy still frustratingly lacked without being able to incorporate a song (he was working on the composing in his head stuff while moving his body stuff. it was hard work multitasking ok?), Eggsy was moving himself up to the moving laser grids in the next room over with his ipod, and headphones, and grabbing his stashed cardboard, and finding fresh cardboard, and finding a new hiding place for it. 

He was onto the big guns now and he was keeping it all secret. He didn’t know how to tell Harry, when he thought about it too hard it felt like he was failing him. He couldn’t do the static grid like Harry wanted, how Harry taught him. They way he mastered it was…probably not worthy of kingsmen standard, probably had a lot of flaws in it or something. It wasn’t proper or right for a gentleman to move to music in that way. Eggsy didn’t know how exactly he was a failure, he just knew he was. 

But, but maybe if he perfected the moving laser grids, got to the hardest settings on the machinery, maybe he could bypass that disappointment? Maybe he could convince harry that he’s not a waste of time and space and resources, that he’s worth keeping around and even if his methods are unconventional and low-class that hey, he still gets the job done, right? Ends justify the means, right?

So eggsy reasons himself into action this way and sets up the lasers for himself almost every day and practices and trains and makes hours of playlists and teaches himself new moves off of youtube.

But, what he didn’t account for was that turning on the laser simulation machinery alerted the technician department of their use because agents need to reserve the simulation rooms with the techs so there are not conflicts of interest, but Eggsy didn’t know this. So a computer jocky gets the notice on her monitor, and she checks the room camera for who’s in there, and Eggsy’s in front of the mirror still watching the lasers move before his foot starts tapping and his fingers start a rhythm on his thigh. Then he’s off. 

There are digital numbers projected on the mirror of how many times you touch the lasers as they move. Eggsy racks up a hundred points. The technician is still too stunned to call him on it though. She brings over a friend. They watch Eggsy dance, his points go down the next run. 

She completely forgets to report him to merlin. 

The next night 5 techs sit down to watch, the fourth night someone brings coffee. The next week, she is making a highlights reel for the other shift techs to watch, they all know what Eggsy is doing and mouths begin to drop when Eggsy gets his score lower and lower beating time records of the other nights completely oblivious. The week after, someone manages to hack Eggsy’s ipod so they can get the audio to the visual and someone suggests they put this shit on youtube, they’d be famous! make so much money.

That idea is shot down with 20 stern glares, what the fuck is wrong with you, Summoning? Don’t you know the meaning of discretion? It’s in the Mission Statement! 

And then Merlin finds out, a month later, two weeks after Eggsy and Harry have stopped the laser grid training, Harry citing that they will work on other things and come back to that, Eggsy knowing he failed. 

Merlin’s face sours as Conjuring brings up the video, Eggsy in the dark room, green lasers dancing across the floor. “He didn’t sign out the room…”

“Just watch, Sir.” Connie urges. She brings up the cctv onto one of Merlin’s large screens and taps away at her tablet until obnoxious techno comes over the speakers. She immediately lowers the volume. Merlin’s eyebrow raises. He watches. 

Eggsy starts with the foot and finger tapping, he stretches tonight, one leg then the next, one arm then the next, twists his back, rolls his neck. Then, with one foot forward he slides into the moving grid, his foot slide curving to the side following the endpoint of a laser, his hips rolling his spine down and he curls into a sideways somersault and he’s into the middle of the grid. 

In under forty five seconds he’s across the floor. The song hasn’t even gotten to the bridge yet and Merlin’s mouth is agape. Eggsy spins on his toes and starts back across from where he came, doing completely different moves. He no longer gets any points, the numbers on the mirror stay zero all night. Eggsy reaches his starting point and almost bounces over to the computer monitor in the wall and changes the laser patterns. He changes his song too. 

Merlin watches transfixed as Eggsy goes through every possible laser pattern rotation. Three times. He finishes the set and turns up the laser speed. He chooses faster music. He starts to get a few points when his music is at 180 bpm, but its still damn impressive. 

Merlin lets out a low whistle.

“I know, right? We were having bets on how soon he’d beat the other agent’s records but it was pointless because he already did it.” Conjuring gushes. 

“Does Arthur know?” Merlin asks. Connie’s face falls.

“Well no, we only just told you. He never signed out the rooms. I think he’s been pilfering the cardboard recycling too. Didn’t want to get him in trouble.” 

“I see. Well, send me this video file. I’ll show him, I’m sure he won’t go too hard on Eggsy.”

“I have a best of reel, would you like that instead? He goes through simulation seventeen to Britney Spears.” 

Merlin grins. “Oh of course.” 

Needless to say. Harry finds a mysterious video in his Arthur Inbox.

…

The next night. Eggsy is in his workourt spandex, his bag slung over his shoulder, a towel around his neck. He enters the laser grid room, goes to put his bag in the usual spot by the  monitor and the mirror and immediately pauses and spins around, his sneakers squeaking. 

“Harry!” 

“Eggsy.” He says, still leaning against the wall by the door where Eggsy walked right past him without even noticing.

“Uh…what are you doing here?”

“Did you know that you need to sign out this room with the Tech department to use it?” Harry asks, a sternness in his voice.

“Oh uh..” Eggsy straightens a little bit, his nerves starting like they normally do when he’s around Harry. “I didn’t…i’ll uh, i start doing that?” He tries. 

“It’s a bit late for that, I’d say.” Harry replies not unkindly, but still not comfortably. “You’ve been lying to me, Eggsy.”

“Wha-” Eggsy breathes out, stunned and nearly devastated. “I, Harry-”

Harry kicks off from the wall and slowly approaches his protege. “Why would you continually flunk out of our training when you were doing all this on the side?” His hand sweeps out to gesture at the general room.

Eggsy’s eyes follow his hand and then back to his stoic face and he pales. “Look Harry…I didn’t mean to..I didn’t want to, I-”Eggsy trails off and lets his gaze drift anywhere but to harry’s eyes. 

“But you did regardless. Why?”

“Shit. Ok.” Eggsy sighs a huge huff of breath and rubs a hand down his face. He takes a few steps away from Harry who had gotten almost intimately close. “You make me nervous, alright?” Eggsy says on the next gust of breath like he needs to punch this out of himself. 

“You make me nervous and this isn’t what you wanted, and i tried doin’ this thing all gentlemanly like you taught and I just can’t do it, ok? I tried. You saw me try and I failed every time. Christ, Harry. You gave up at the end and I can’t keep disappointin’ you.” 

“Eggsy…” Harry says again, but Eggsy isn’t looking at him. He is rubbing his fingers over his brow and looking to the side, then to the laser hubs. He grabs his bag.

“Look, I’ll do better, try harder. I’ll sign out the room next time, ok?” Eggsy says in embarrassed defeat and tries to brush past Harry and escape the room.

Obviously that doesn’t work and he doesn’t make it far. Harry grabs him by the elbow and Eggsy stops.

“I’m by no means disappointed, Eggsy.” Harry says as he spins the boy back to face him. “In fact, I think you’ve ‘done better’ than any knight in history.”

“What?”

Harry is pulling his cellphone from his inner coat pocket and swiping it unlocked with his thumb as he speaks. “Did you know the entire Tech department sits down every evening with drinks and popcorn?” 

“Uh…” Eggsy mumbles, confused as he watches Harry’s fingers go through his phone, his email, to a video attachment.

“Did you know, its because of you? That you beat every timing record we have for the laser grids on every instance of pattern and speed, because you  _danced_ through the simulations?” 

Eggsy’s best of video that Conjuring cut together begins to play from Harry’s phone and Eggsy doesn’t even notice when Harry’s free hand snakes around his waist and pulls him close he’s too stunned and turning a delightful shade of completely embarrassed red.

“Jesus.” 

“Indeed.”

“I, uh…”

Harry tightens his grip, Eggsy finally notices it. He freezes. 

“My boy, Just because i teach one method does not mean there aren’t hundreds of equally effective others.”

“But its not…very gentlemanly…” Eggsy counters weakly, breathlessly. 

“Nonsense.” Harry’s hand on Eggsy’s waist slides higher over his ribs, into a proper one armed hug. “This is entrancing to watch, utterly elegant and captivating. I’d say it is a method quite deserving of a gentleman. Especially one sneaking past security details in seconds flat.”

Eggsy finally grins and looks up at Harry, so close and warm at his side. “Yeah?” 

“Quite. Can I have a demonstration?” 

Eggsy’s eyebrows furrow and he frowns. “I dunno…” He protests weakly. 

“Why not?” Harry asks as he squeezes Eggsy tighter before letting go.

“Because you make me nervous…I said that.” Eggsy steps away and rubs the back of his neck.

“Well, my boy, breaking past laser sensing security measures should never be a stress free job. This will be good training. Come along.” Harry says brightly with a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he crosses over to the simulation set-up monitor. 

Eggsy groans and follows. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @ zinfandelli.tumblr.com :) come and headcanon jam or just gush with me <3


End file.
